Rehearse and Recall Sport

What is a Retrieval Cue?
Retrieval Cue: Anything that aids recall.
Goal: Develop control by making explicit retrieval cues. This would be anything that can be put in shoebox, such as a  word, picture, music.

• All retrieval cues are explicitly created when learning
• All retrieval cues are rehearsed during priming
• Own style will dictate if any or all used while performing (see focus and flow)

How Do You Make a Retrieval Cue?

Implicit retrieval cues:

· Are always being created

· Advantage: Are integrated and complex, promoting smooth movements and mastery

· Disadvantage: Do not have control of how or where they are created

Explicit retrieval cues:

· Are deliberately being created by us by forcing an association.

· Practically, an explicit retrieval cue should be anything that can put in a shoebox (word, picture, music..)

· Create a retrieval cue when think of retrieval cue while at same time think or do activity.

· Do not create retrieval cue if think analytically, “this retrieval cue means this movement”. Will not associate because   retrieval cue and activity are not at the same time in working memory. You want to synthesize using right side of brain. You do not want to analyze its importance, using the left side of the brain.

How Do You Know You Have a Retrieval Cue?

• When think of retrieval cue (word, picture etc.), then at the same time the idea should come to mind, and the idea should be the same over time.
• When performing an activity, can sometimes experience retrieval cue in mind.

Types of Retrieval Cues
Kinetic: Daily muscle memory

• advantage promotes smooth performance
• disadvantage implicit (not explicit) - so is difficult to control
  • requires more overt training
  • must train day before competition

“Pretend”: Experience everything in your mind (visualizing, kinetic, mood etc)

• advantage open in method of learning, so person’s stronger learning and remembering skills will be used.
• example: often people are told to “visualize” to learn and recall movements, but children cannot visualize, so when you say “pretend”, they rehearse using implicit cognitions

Visualization (Pictures, Video)

• For learning:
  • To help
    • learn modules
    • integrate modules
  • To prime muscle memory and overall performance
• For priming:
  • Visualize movements, not static pictures, so that one movement flows with the next. If visualize pictures, your movements will become robot-like.
  • Visualize diagrams like a road map (the diagram’s right is your right)
• What type of visualizer are you?
  • visualizing from self (from inside) means that you view the world as you see it.
    • you can
      • visualize your body in space
      • visualize your body only
  • third person (from outside) means that you see yourself as others would see you.
  • Test which visualizer type you are by doing the following test: Draw “E” on forehead with finger →
    • If draw so you can read it → mostly internal (from self).
    • If draw so others can read it → third person (from outside)

Stimulus Control: Is something in the environment or situation that becomes a retrieval cue.

• Explicit situational control: Promotes appropriate attention (example: see “end points”)
• Implicit environmental control:
  • Environment itself may be an implicit retrieval cue (example: SAT, different course conditions)
  • You are reacting to the course situation, and not thinking about it.

Words, Mnemonics

• Associate word to
  • specific movement
  • overall movement
• While doing activity, or experiencing activity, at the same time think of specific retrieval cue, such as word “crisp” “smooth”. If think “crisp means this activity” → It will not associate because not in working memory at the same time.
• Types of words to use as retrieval cues:
  • Specific words (example: “arm”) to help you on how to do new skill
  • Feeling type words (example: “smooth”) may cue a well-rehearsed complex movement

Music

• Listening to a specific piece of music can cue the feel of your movements, just in the same way that a song can remind you of a party you went to in which that song was playing.

priming: the procedure an athlete uses to prepare him/herself for activity.

Priming Body

· physical - warmup and arousal

· psychosomatic - anxiety control methods (relaxation, biofeedback) if totally freaked out.

Priming Mind

· control how pre-motor part of brain fires off before activity using retrieval cues

· rehearse high order info in frontal cortex (why questions)

· appropriate metabolism in brain. Increase metabolism by focusing on event. Decrease metabolism by distraction from event.

Seasonal Priming

> [see diagram: priming - preseason to onseason]

Priming for Different Athletic Abilities

> [see diagram: priming: retrieval cues for different athletic levels]

Timing of Rehearsals:

• Slow (slower than real time) - when figuring something out
• Real Time - for accurate recording of timing
• Fast (faster than real time)
  • only after learned skill
  • to cue performance:
    • to prime cues of large chunks of information
    • to review sequences